Fear and Hope
by Ambiguous Loon
Summary: Being lost, being alone, being scared. The past, the present, and the future. Choosing to grow past pain is a long and difficult path. Hope is an empty promise of a better future. And trusting in hope, and hope alone, feels a a lot like being alone and scared again. A/U


Disclaimer: I do not own Sam. His character, family, and the angle are based on contents from Supernatural.

Warnings: A/U, loose-editing, vaguely based on the Titanic tragedy. While no angles are directly referenced, I got the idea of the candy giving voice of light from Gabriel, who in the Bible, helps people overcome fear (partly why he/she was sent to Mary) and is often associated with water.

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><p>"Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear."<p>

-Baruch Spinoza

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><p>Sam wasn't sure how he felt about this whole afterlife thing. And that's what it was, he knew that much, if not much else. Honestly, he didn't feel much of anything. Maybe that was a side-effect. Something to help.<p>

Because he certainly remembered. Everything. His father and his mother and his brother. Always at odds but closer than blood required. Sam remembered being excited- they all were.

Finally! Mom had said, something to grow for! The new land where they could live without the prejudiced of their dark haired, hazel eyed gypsy blood. They would be happy and lucky – just like before. Only now they would be accepted too.

Sam liked that word: accepted. The way Mom's eyes would light up. When they did everyone from his grouchy father to his pestering older brother would light up too. Sam studied the memories, but nothing happened. He felt –ironically he supposed- dead.

He even remembered the cold in the end and the panic in the air. He knew he had been scared and just so lonely that it had hurt. Everyone was somewhere and it wasn't here. Sam remembered thinking that before the world joined the sea as frozen darkness around him. He remembered feeling a pain in his very soul at the knowledge they he was alone there. Alone, and scared, and cold, and…and so many things a young man shouldn't ever be. Something inside him had broken and it hurt. It hurt more than the ice that gripped at him when he first hit the sea. Worse than any beating he'd gotten growing up. A hollow area created by final knowledge.

Maybe they were safe. Maybe. And he knew that should have helped, that he should have been…relived? Thankful? Happy? But all he remembered was wanting them there, with him, now. Even though he knew it would mean they were suffering the same as him. They had always suffered together. Sam wanted them with him so that the sea around him would seem quite so suffocating in the dark. And it was just so dark. He remembered that too. Lights had been swallowed by it and the cold and the dark just pressed and waited. It hurt even when he went numb.

Sam remembered it but the numbness had remained and spread. He could still feel the emptiness in his chest, but there was just a hollow echo of pain where it had once flourished.

He wasn't alone though. Not now that he wanted to be. People were everywhere, talking, walking, shopping, and living. They seemed happy and at ease. Some passed and would stop to stare at him, a confused and upset look in their eyes, before hurrying away to live their deaths. Sam knew he unsettled them, but he didn't feel anything about that either. He was still alone. His family wasn't with him, or he wasn't with them. Whichever, it wasn't right, he thought, that they should be apart for so long.

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><p>Time passed. It felt like a lot of time, but Sam had no way of telling. It was always a quite dawn and a stunning sunset and a perfect afternoon. Everything was there and nothing seemed to change. It annoyed him. So did the people here. They were so freaking content and pleased with everything. All day and night they chatted or ate or strolled. It didn't matter what they did, they did it with this content sort of glow about them that just annoying him.<p>

That was the first thing he felt.

It wasn't as strong as when he remembered feeling in life but it was what he felt now. The only thing. So he concentrated on it, kept it fresh in his mind. It was something different and anything different, at this point, was good.

It annoyed him that everyone still gave him that sad, uneasy look.

It annoyed him how they scurried past him.

It annoyed him that he was still alone here.

And then he was angry. It was the second thing he felt.

So he left. He walked as far away from everyone as he could because they knew something. The looks they'd been giving him, they had to know something! They didn't want him here and he really didn't want to be here, so he left. He hated them and walked till trees replaced people and moss replaced pavement. He was alone here and that's exactly what he had wanted. He was alone even with all those annoying, hated people around. And if he was going to be alone either way than having them around was useless.

Sam had no idea who long he stood in the woods angry and annoyed before he heard the voice.

It wasn't anyone he knew…but somehow. He didn't know, there was something about it was helped. His annoyance ebbed away, His anger became lackluster. He was numb again and he hated it, so Sam told the voice so.

It offered him candy instead of emotion.

He left the candy on the ground and walked away again. He didn't hear the voice again for a long while.

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><p>After walking for so long, it was the sea that did it. The woods ended abruptly and the ocean was spread out. It was blue and fresh and warm. The total opposite of what Sam remembered. The smell was the same though. And that was all it took.<p>

He felt again.

This time fear rolled through him. It covered his vision and stole his body. He ran from it, back into the woods. The numbness he's felt in them was gone. Nothing else was in him but fear. He could see himself in the water, light vanishing, alone again. Cold and pain and feeling. The bump of debris. The silence that followed the panic.

He ran till the voice stopped him. A light, hovering voice of obscured shape that clung to him, forcing him to stop fleeing.

It was different, he was reminded. This sea and his sea. The sound and the color and the life in it. They weren't the same. No need to panic anymore, it's ok. They're not the same.

Sam could taste sugary lemon and it cut through the fear. Here he was, sitting on dirt in rock in the woods, eating candy with a glowing something. Running from fear. Now that it was gone though, he was left with something else.

The sea, the cold, and dark. None of it was worse than the loneliness.

He could feel it again. Rushing up from where it had hidden itself. Blinding in its intensity. Sam remembered how his mother could light up. He remembered how defeated his father had looked before they'd been separated.

He remembered his brother, his voice calling for him through panic and discord. It sounded so...scared. His brother was never scared though. Never. Not through storms or mobs. Not even when they had tried to survive together in the end.

But Sam remembered his name being yelled, screamed. He remembers thinking it'd be ok if he could just reach his brother. That if his brother wasn't scared anymore, it would be ok. He remembered the people around him panicked and angry and so set on survival. He remember feeling one for them push past him, trying so hard to get somewhere a little safer.

He remember his name as he fell, cutting through everything. He wanted so badly to get back. His brother was…he didn't…his brother shouldn't be scared too. He never was. But now…now his voice was there, scared and hurt and alone. And when the icy water hit him, it was gone.

It was still gone, he realized. He couldn't get back to it, he couldn't help. Somewhere, sometime his brother had tried to reach him. And he couldn't. And here Sam was, on the floor of some woods, running from the sea and hiding from everyone else. Someone was there, arm around him, trying to save him from the hole that grew and ached in his chest. The light next to him, warming him even as his mind was frozen in the dark, freezing water. It was whispering something to him, but all he could hear was the echo is his name, screaming at him as he fell. The silence that followed it.

All he could feel was pain, crawling through him making him feel sick and empty.

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><p>He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there. The woods never changed and the light stayed with him, talking and comforting. He couldn't make out the words, they sounded unfamiliar and strange. But they never stopped and slowly he heard them. In the back of his mind where it was cold and dark and silent, the words had burrowed through, leaving a path to the outside.<p>

It was scary in here, but out there was no different. Not really. No one was there. Not his mother or father or brother. No anyone he needed. In here he could hear the echo. Devastating and painful but it was all he had now. The only sound connecting him to what he wanted.

He wanted his family back. He wanted to be safe. He wanted to take the fear from his brother, the dark acceptance he'd seen from his father. He wanted to see his mother's eyes. Anything but silence.

But he could still hear the light's words, trying to pull him to its path. Sam fought back. He fought for the pain and fear. He knew it and it was all he had now.

But the voice kept on. It was safe outside. It was light and warm.

But it was lonely out there too, Sam reminded them. His brother was here. And somewhere so was his father and his mother.

Not anymore. The voice was steady and quiet. There aren't here anymore. They aren't outside either. They're somewhere else from both these places. You can't stay here with them because they're not here.

And Sam stopped. He looked around. It was dark. Sounds and lights had long since been eaten by that dark. He was here. Cold and alone. Listening for an echo that had faded away.

The only sound left was the voice, calling him out, careful and soft. Slowly the darkness ebbed away. Delicate light eased in. Sounds from the woods grew quietly around. The endless chasm of water beneath him turned to earth.

The light had filled out into a vague human figure; it never stopped talking, words easing the past into the present. The woods returned, but the hole in him reminded behind, refusing to close and dull itself.

But now he could hear echoes and voices called not after him, but to him.

No one was here yet. But they might be. Someday that wasn't today the echoes would grow into existence. One would meet the other because sometime ahead, somewhere else, he wouldn't be alone.

The end.

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><p>Some words: I'm sharing this piece here because it means a lot to me. It's not edited- as I'm certain you could tell. It was written after a devastating loss of some very important people. It's been a long recovery for me, but I get it now. Getting and accepting tragedy is bitter. It hurts. But it's necessary. Pain and fear and loneliness won't go away, not for a very long time, but staying with the in the past doesn't allow for life. Anyone who has gone through h something similar, I'm sorry you had to go through it. Sometimes things happen. We're human and often we can't do anything about it. But we can try to move forward because that allows for hope. And everyone needs hope.<p> 


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